5 Covered Writes: Priceline Our Top Choice

By Sol Palha: "If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell." Thomas Merton We selected five candidates and from this group, we have selected one as our top pick. A covered write strategy is suggested for our top pick. One can use a similar strategy on any of the other candidates if one finds them to be of interest. If you are unfamiliar with a "covered writes" strategy, see our piece "Benefits of a Covered Writes Strategy."We like Priceline.com, Inc. (PCLN) for the following reasons:

It has a five-year return on Investment average of 32%.

Net income exploded from $489 million in 2009 to 1.47 billion in 2011.

Cash flow per share is up almost 150% from $10.23 per share in 2009 to $24.52 a share in 2011.

By Sol Palha:In the learning to fish series, we provide investors with suggested guidelines for choosing a potential candidate and one candidate is selected as our play of choice. We provide reasons for this choice and in doing so hope to impart some understanding to those who are new to the field of dividend investing. A lot of ratios will be used throughout this article, and it would be best for investors to get a handle on some of these ratios as they could prove to be very useful to the selection process.

By Sol Palha:In the learning to fish series, we provide investors with suggested guidelines for choosing a potential candidate and one candidate is selected as our play of choice. We provide reasons for this choice and in doing so hope to impart some understanding to those who are new to the field of investing. It is important that readers take the time to read and understand the selection process involved in coming up with these picks.

By Sol Palha:We like Chevron Corp (CVX) for the following reasons:A decent quarterly revenue growth rate of 13.3%A great three year total return of 101%Net income has surged from $10 billion in 2009 to roughly 27 billion in 2011.Cash flow per share has jumped from $10.86 in 2009 to $19.99 in 2011, an increase of over 83%

By Sol Palha:In the learning to fish series, we provide investors with suggested guidelines for choosing a potential candidate and one candidate is selected as our play of choice. We provide reasons for this choice and in doing so hope to impart some understanding to those who are new to the field of dividend investing. A lot of ratios will be used throughout this article, and it would be best for investors to get a handle on some of these ratios as they could prove to be very useful to the selection process.

By Sol Palha:Philip Morris International (PM) is a leading international tobacco company, with products sold in approximately 180 countries. In 2011, the company held an estimated 16% share of the international cigarette market outside of the U.S., or 28.1% excluding the People's Republic of China and the U.S.